Hot off the Press

If you’re like me, you already own more books than you can possibly read before A.D. 2020. Still, sometimes you find a new one that calls you to move some stuff to the long-term reading list because it demands attention now.

And it looks like we’ll need to make room on the nightstand for Andy Crouch’s work, Culture Making.

In it he “unleashes a stirring manifesto calling Christians to be culture makers. For too long Christians have had an insufficient view of culture and have waged misguided culture wars. But we must reclaim the cultural mandate to be the creative cultivators that God designed us to be.”

Here are some swanky endorsements from people I respect:

Lauren F. Winner, assistant professor of Christian spirituality, Duke Divinity School, and author of Girl Meets God

"Are Christians to be countercultural? Or protect ourselves from 'the culture'? Or be 'in' culture but not 'of' it? In this bracing, super-smart book, Andy Crouch changes the terms of the conversation, calling Christians to make culture. I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first-century American Christians need to read more."

Phyllis Tickle, compiler of The Divine Hours and former religion editor, Publishers Weekly

"In this graceful, articulate volume Crouch challenges Christian common wisdom about creation and challenges as well our traditional understandings about the Revelation to John and how it articulates with the rest of Holy Writ. As refreshing as it is smart, Culture Making is a significant addition to contemporary Christian thought."

David Neff, editor-in-chief and vice president, Christianity Today Media Group

"In Culture Making, Andy Crouch has given us a vision for creativity that is not reserved for the practitioners of high art, but that reveals the dignity of the most ordinary sorts of cultural creation. It is a transformative vision that inspires to action and--in the face of the almost inevitable failures--perseverance. In the end, cultural creativity is not a gift we own, exercise and grow anxious over, but one that we receive and nurture--and through which we come to know grace."

Crouch (M.Div., Boston University School of Theology) is editorial director of the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today International. He served as executive producer for the documentary films “Where Faith and Culture Meet” and “Round Trip.” He also sits on the editorial board for Books & Culture (to which I subscribe) and has been a columnist for Christianity Today (also on my subscription list). For ten years he served as a campus minister with InterVarsity at Harvard. He’s also a classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz and gospel.

Check it out.